First Stories…with Rachel Funez

Welcome back, dear readers! Warm wishes for a very merry holiday season. This truly is the season for warm mugs, snuggly slippers, and roaring fires. I hope that you’ll stir up a pot of coffee or hot chocolate or cider, cuddle under a blanket, and settle in for a great First Stories interview with one of my fellow Kids Book Crew authors –

Rachel Funez!

Rachel Funez was born in the United States, spent most of her childhood living in Latin America, and is now an attorney raising multicultural children in Peru. A neurodivergent creator with ADHD and Anxiety, Rachel wishes she could hug every kid who is struggling with overwhelming feelings. But she will settle for creating stories that celebrate children with special brains and help them cope with their big emotions in productive ways. When Rachel isn’t writing or working, she enjoys walking her bearded collie, playing board games with her family, dancing like nobody’s watching, and cuddling up on rainy afternoons with a hot beverage and a good book. You can learn more about Rachel by checking out her website at rachelfunez.com.

Me: Rachel! Welcome to First Stories!

Rachel: Thanks for having me, Heather!

Me: It’s always fun for me to chat with fellow Kids Book Crew authors! The Kids Book Crew is a group of children’s book authors with books releasing in late 2023 and 2024. And Rachel’s book cover JUST released! And it’s incredible! But we’ll get to that…for now…let’s dive in.

Tell me about your “first story.” The one that really pushed you to consider publishing. What inspired you to write it? What was it about?

Rachel: I think I’ve wanted to be a published author for as long as I can remember. But the first story I wrote that I felt had the potential to be publishable was All Aboard the Cuzco Train, which – after many revisions – is a lyrical bilingual counting book with an SEL component focused on anxiety and cross-cultural adjustment. It was inspired by a train ride I took as a child from Cuzco, Peru to my home city of Arequipa.

Me: This sounds so imaginative and fun with massive kid-appeal! Where is this story now?

Rachel: Actually, I’m still submitting it to various agents.

Me: Best wishes on querying agents! I hope to see this book on a shelf one day!
Are there any themes in that story that you can see in your writing today?

Rachel: Absolutely. As a neurodivergent creator with anxiety and ADHD many of my books have SEL (social-emotional learning) themes. I also enjoy writing lyrical books and bilingual manuscripts.

Me: What special and important themes to explore! Looking back, what elements of that first story made it unmarketable? Did you receive feedback on that story? What did that feedback teach you?

Rachel: The earliest drafts were too simple. They had some lyrical elements, but it was just a very simple bilingual counting book. I received a lot of feedback on the manuscript over the years and worked on it with my #PBChat mentor, Anika Denise, to improve the structure and narrative arch and really punch up the voice. Now it has many more layers that I think make it more marketable, and it’s just a great read-aloud.

Me: You’ve honed in on a critical aspect of crafting quality picture books. They’re deceptively simple, with few words, but adding layers of meaning heightens their re-readability.

Why is that “first story” special to you? How was it important for your writing journey?

Rachel: It’s loosely based on my personal experience, so that makes it special to me. As the first picture book I wrote, it’s also been important to my writing journey. In revising that book I learned how to use mentor texts effectively and add layers. Also, writing it really helped me find and enhance my voice.

Me: I love hearing about all that you’ve learned from this first story! How cool!

You have a book releasing in July 2024 from Free Spirit Publishing – Sonia and the Super-Duper Disaster! How did you come up with the idea for this lovely book? Does it relate at all to your “first story”?

Rachel: Sonia and the Super-Duper Disaster is about a little girl with ADHD and anxiety who forgets her mom’s birthday. She’s determined to whip up a super surprise and become Mom’s hero. But her ADHD foils her best-laid plans, the Destructi-Cats jump into the mix, and her anxiety multiplies as the chaos grows. Sonia has to use all her coping skills to find a new recipe for success and become her own superhero.

Sonia’s story was originally inspired by my daughter’s failed attempt to cut a bagel with a butter knife, which resulted in a bagel crumble and a major meltdown. After MANY revisions, I realized that, at its root, this story was about my own struggles with ADHD, anxiety, and perfectionism. My own struggle to accept the messy chaos that comes with raising young children. And my own desire to let go of my anxiety and instead find the humor in that chaos. Once I leaned into those elements, Sonia and the Super-Duper Disaster really came together.

As far as how it relates to my first story, on the surface they are very different stories. Cuzco Train is a lyrical concept book with a cumulative structure. Sonia is a pun-filled superhero-themed story with a more traditional structure. But they both have humorous building chaos and anxiety themes. And both were stories that improved a LOT when I learned to really lean into the neurodiverse and SEL elements of my picture books.

Me: I really cannot WAIT to read this book! You can pre-order copies of Sonia already (check out the link below!).

Thanks so much for joining me, Rachel!

Rachel: Thanks again for having me, Heather.

Rachel has generously offered a fiction picture book critique giveaway (up to 800 words). To be entered in the contest, retweet the original Twitter/X link OR comment below OR comment on the Twitter/X post. Winners will be announced on social media.